3 April, 2012Despite a ban on sandblasting announced by many brands some time ago, according to a recent report, sandblasting is still used in the production of artificially worn-out jeans. Large factories in poor countries continue using the deadly technique notorious for its health risks to workers.
GENEVA: Famous jeans brands including H&M, Levi's, Lee, Diesel and Zara sourcing denim from Bangladesh came under fire with the release of new research revealing Bangladeshi garment workers continue to be exposed to deadly risks while producing faded jeans for European consumers. The report "Deadly Denim", issued by the Clean Clothes Campaign in Geneva on March 23, found that large Bangladeshi factories exporting jeans overseas continue to use sandblasting.
Sandblasting is a technique applied to jeans fabric in order to make it look "worn-out". Based on discovered risks of fatal lung diseases including silicosis for sandblasting workers, European countries prohibited these manufacturing processes many years ago. Reluctant to lose their profits, European companies have continued sourcing sandblasted jeans from non-regulated regions, particularly in Turkey, Syria, Bangladesh, Mexico, India and Indonesia, later moving to Southeast Asia and North Africa.
The International, Textile, Garment & Leather Workers' Federation (ITGLWF) and the European federation have been campaigning against the use of sandblasting all over the world for many years. Thanks to this work the Turkish Ministry of Labour decided to ban the sandblasting in 2009.
Later, in 2010, ITGLWF celebrated another success when Levi Strauss & Co. and Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) became the first to implement a global ban on sandblasting in their supply chains. In so doing, these companies went beyond the ban adopted by Turkey and extended the ban to all operations globally.
Since then, many brands have declared that they no longer use sandblasting to fade their products, however, as the Deadly Denim report shows, often factories revert to the technique of manual or mechanical sand blasting in order to meet the design requirements and deadlines without informing their customers. The worn-out look can be achieved through the use of special heavy industrial equipment, but it requires additional investment and most companies prefer to use "cheap" workers' lives instead.
In 2011, the ITGLWF worked with a number of brands to develop a Call to Action, which calls on brands to adequate steps to ban the process of sandblasting throughout their supply chains and to work with their suppliers to transition to safe alternative methods. So far a dozen brands have sigend on to the ban and efforts are underway to encourage others to join.
Clean Clothes Campaign is an alliance of organisations in 15 European countries including trade unions and non-governmental organizations, supporting the empowerment of workers in the global garment and sportswear industries.